Document

This article has an unclear citation style. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking.(June 2013)

Several common types of documents: a birth certificate, a legal document (a restraining order), and a bank statement.

A document is a written, drawn, presented or recorded representation of thoughts. Originating from the Latin Documentum meaning lesson - the verb doceō means to teach, and is pronounced similarly, in the past it was usually used as a term for a written proof used as evidence. In the computer age, a document is usually used to describe a primarily textual file, along with its structure and design, such as fonts, colors and additional images.

The modern term 'document' can no longer be defined by its transmission medium (such as paper), following the existence of electronic documents. 'Documentation' has more meanings than a written or drawn presentation of thoughts.

The formal term 'document' is defined in Library and information science and in documentation science, as a basic theoretical construct. It is everything which may be preserved or represented in order to serve as evidence for some purpose. The classical example provided by Suzanne Briet is an antelope: "An antelope running wild on the plains of Africa should not be considered a document, she rules. But if it were to be captured, taken to a zoo and made an object of study, it has been made into a document. It has become physical evidence being used by those who study it. Indeed, scholarly articles written about the antelope are secondary documents, since the antelope itself is the primary document." (Quoted from Buckland, 1998 [1]). (This view has been seen as an early expression of what now is known as actor–network theory).

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The concept of document has been defined as “any concrete or symbolic indication, preserved or recorded, for reconstructing or for proving a phenomenon, whether physical or mental" (Briet, 1951, 7; here quoted from Buckland, 1991).

A much cited article asked "what is a document" and concluded this way: “The evolving notion of ‘‘document’’ among (Jonathan Priest). Otlet, Briet, Schürmeyer, and the other documentalists increasingly emphasized whatever functioned as a document rather than traditional physical forms of documents. The shift to digital technology would seem to make this distinction even more important. Levy’s thoughtful analyses have shown that an emphasis on the technology of digital documents has impeded our understanding of digital documents as documents (e.g., Levy, 1994[2]). A conventional document, such as a mail message or a technical report, exists physically in digital technology as a string of bits, as does everything else in a digital environment. As an object of study, it has been made into a document. It has become physical evidence by those who study it.

Value of document research exemplified: Aviation to many is an esoteric subject. It is an intricate combination of men, machines and environment. Because of the technological façade that predominates aviation, people are almost unaware of its aesthetic make up particularly that of flight. This has serious implications for aviation education. Even the professionals handling safety of flights and passengers are sort of realization of literary values of aviation that basically deals with flights. Scholarly intervention for educating youths and aviation professionals on matters of safety, too, is rare. The object of one’s research may be the aviation documents dedicated to safety of flights and human beings that travel by air which contains plethora of concrete and symbolic indications of physical and mental phenomena that it has recorded. These indications have not been addressed in a manner that could contribute to peoples’ arousal, awareness and interest towards aviation. The study may be designed to claim that the deep structure of aviation safety documents posit philosophical and literary features of high aesthetic and educational values, which the study seeks to explore. These ontological and literary values can be elaborated in a way that facilitates creating rich aviation literature having implications for disciplinary education of the aviation professionals at work for safety. The implications of study for research intervention at tertiary university level may also be discussed. A qualitative researcher may undertake to analyse the text inductively as well as deductively within post structural critical perspective utilizing interpretive auto-ethnographic strategy. (Baral, Saurabh R., 2014. Aviation English: A study of the ontological and literary dimensions of aviation safety documents and their implications for aviation education. A concept proposal for PhD in English. Self)

The page layout of a document is the manner in which information is graphically arranged in the document space (e.g., on a page). If the appearance of the document is of concern, page layout is generally the responsibility of a graphic designer. Typography deals with the design of letter and symbol forms, as well as their physical arrangement in the document (see typesetting). Information design focuses on the effective communication of information, especially in industrial documents and public signs. Simple text documents may not require a visual design and may be handled by an author, clerk or transcriber. Forms may require a visual design for the initial fields, but not to fill out the forms.

Traditionally, the medium of a document was paper and the information was applied to it as ink, either by hand (to make a hand-written document) or by a mechanical process (such as a printing press or, more recently, a laser printer).

Documents in all forms are frequently found to be material evidence in criminal and civil proceedings. The forensic analysis of such a document falls under the scope of questioned document examination. For the purpose of cataloging and managing the large number of documents that may be produced in the course of a lawsuit, Bates numbering is often applied to all documents so that each document has a unique, aribitrary identifying number.